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THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 12, 2015
black-and-white to color when the
characters enter Oz, were the composer
and the lyricist! In an important way,
I took the list of credits at the end of
a Hollywood film as my model of how
artistic creation really happens."
As Becker has written elsewhere,
enlarging the end-credits metaphor,
"A 'world' as I understand it consists
of real people who are trying to get
things done, largely by getting other
people to do things that will assist
them in their project. . . . The result-
ing collective activity is something that
perhaps no one wanted, but is the best
everyone could get out of this situa-
tion and therefore what they all, in
e ect, agreed to." In a Beckerian world,
we act the way we do because of a cer-
tain logic of events---jazz musicians
are supposed to smoke dope, gradu-
ate students learn how to please their
supervisors---but there are lots of
di erent roles within the world, and
we can choose which one to play, and
how to play it. We're all actors, not
angels or completely free agents. But
we are looking for applause, so we put
on the best show we can. This view
of the world has something in com-
mon with that of Becker's longtime
friend and colleague Erving Go man.
"But Go man got more interested in
the micro-dramatics of things," Becker
points out, meaning, for instance, his
studies of how people look when they
lie. "I was always more interested in
the big picture."
After a morning's talk, Becker makes
his way, steadily if slowly, around
the corner to his favorite lunchtime
bistro, where he is well known, and,
seated at a corner table by the glass
façade, orders a steak frites. His fingers
tap on the tabletop: he still plays the
piano, and plays it well. Just last year,
he issued a new CD of himself work-
ing over some standards. "Many years
after studying with Lennie," he recalls,
"IwasinNewYorkandonawhim
called him up at his home, somewhere
on Long Island. We schmoozed for a
while and he congratulated me on my
success as a sociologist and then said,
'You know? I always liked the way you
played. Why don't you quit your job
and move to New York and study with
me again?' I had a momentary feeling
that, yes, that's what I should do! But
I overcame it."
Becker is aware of the irony that,
while he remains on the "left" of Amer-
ican sociology, as a moral leveller, he
is on the right of the French kind, as
an apostle of agency and action. He is
more than willing to apply detached
Beckerian analysis to his role in France.
"In France, people say about another
professor, I would cross the street to
avoid him! But in America we wouldn't
be on the same street. A lot of what
happens involves the di erence in the
size of the country and the central-
ization of the universities. People can
have hegemony of a sort in an Amer-
ican school, but not really. You're going
to take over the departments at Berke-
ley and Stanford and Harvard and
Yale and at all the smaller places where
the real energies are simmering any-
way? Doesn't happen." He thinks it
over for a minute, between bites of
onglet and courteous chat with the bis-
tro's owner. "You know what the real
problem with Bourdieu was? The real
problem with Bourdieu was that he
was a schmuck," he says at last. "Power-
hungry and mean in spirit and ob-
sessed with career."
Becker tries to observe his own as-
cendancy in France with the same de-
tachment with which he observes
other people, but his appeal to the
French goes beyond his simply not
being Bourdieu. The French myth of
America is as robust as the American
myth of France, and one important
element in it is the idea that Ameri-
cans can arrive intuitively at results
that the French can get to only by
thinking a lot. Like the Hollywood
moviemakers whom the French New
Wave critics adopted in the fifties and
sixties, Becker is beloved in Paris in
part because he doesn't seem overen-
cumbered with theory or undue ab-
straction. As Heather Love also points
out, "U.S. deviance studies has the in-
ternational allure of American crime
fiction, and with a cool narrator like
Becker, all the better."
But, to his French admirers, this
doesn't disprove the need for theory; it
just means that sometimes the best the-
ories are left mysteriously unspoken.
That Howard Hawks made so many
good movies without actually having a
theory of moviemaking was a strong
sign that he must really have a fantas-
tic theory of the movies, if he would
only tell you. Becker's reputation is a
bit like that: if you can say so many
interesting things just by watching the
world, then you must really have a
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
About her: the air, warm as fact.
An imaginary boat heading o to hell, her foot pushing it o shore.
The sunlit bank, a mirage of the perfect past.
She was barking at the waves, thinking they barked first.
But this was not a river. It was Thursday, a word cast in lead.
Her eye had turned the water into sky.
The poet is a trespasser.
The poet is the king of Rome, New York, with one foot in a boat and
one against the snowy shore of reason.
Wondering if, like a boy, she could go there for a season.
Elizabeth Willis